Saturday, May 18, 2013

Waitaminute. Isn't The IRS Supposed To Watch Out For Tax Cheats?

As if it weren't already clear that the so-called "IRS scandal" is
nothing of the sort, now it's becoming even clearer that it's a just
another bit of that down-the-rabbit-hole-up-is-downism in which
conservatives have come to specialize in recent years.

The Institute for Research and Education in Human Rights -- which,
among other things, monitors the far-right extremists who have been
filling the ranks of the Tea Party -- has an excellent takedown of the
IRS nonsense:

While it is well-known that the so-called IRS scandal has been used by
Tea Partiers to bash the IRS, less well known are the actual facts of
the case.

Some of the flagged groups did have their tax-exempt status delayed
or did face some additional scrutiny, but not a single group has been
denied tax-exempt status.

A May 14 draft report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax
Administration found that none of the 296 questionable applicants had
been denied, “For the 296 potential political cases we reviewed, as of
December 17, 2012, 108 applications had been approved, 28 were withdrawn
by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 cases were open from
206 to 1,138 calendar days (some crossing two election cycles).” (p. 14)

In fact, the only known 501(c)(4) applicant to recently have its
status denied happens to be a progressive group: the Maine chapter of
Emerge America, which trains Democratic women to run for office.
Although the group did no electoral work, and didn’t participate in
independent expenditure campaign activity either, its partisan nature
disqualified it from being categorized as working for the “common good.”

The Inspector General’s report found that in the “majority of cases,
we agreed that the applications submitted included indications of
significant political campaign intervention.” (p. 10). In fact, only 91
of the 296, roughly 31%, of the applications reviewed for the report
did not have “indications of significant political campaign
intervention.” In other words, more than two thirds of those flagged for
processing by a team of specialists had those indications.
That sort of political campaign intervention would normally
disqualify a group from 501(c)(4) status, but the deluge of Tea Party
applications combined with the politicization of the process has allowed
them to slip through. A closer look by IREHR at the activities of some
of the Tea Party groups that are currently under review or have received
non-profit status from the IRS, reveals a difficult and dangerous
situation.

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.